So some might know I often post translations of Ace Attorney news and other articles here, but there's still a lot of untranslated, or only partly translated/summarized material about the series out there. And that incudes interesting blog posts, interviews and other things where the creators of the series talk about the development of the series and how they came up with their ideas.

And that's why I made a blog to serve as a place for translations of those articles: Gyakuten Saiban - Ace Attorney Library. My plan is to post complete translations there of all kinds of articles about the Ace Attorney series: from the original GBA Justice for All developers blog, to more recent interviews, as long as it has to do with the development of the game series. It should provide insights in how the games are made.

I focus on complete translations, because that shows everything in context: how often haven't you seen someone say "I heard that X said...", without really understanding in what context it was said and what X really meant?

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Last edited by Ash on Thu Jul 14, 2016 2:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Anyway, the plan is to have at least one bigger article for every game, and then things like interesting blog posts (if available). Like the update today: it's one written by Takumi about Yamazaki (who is now running the Ace Attorney circus), back when he first joined the company and worked a planner. The idea he mentions is kinda... surprising. Takumi totally stole Yamazaki's idea!

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Reading these articles with the Power of Hindsight is pretty interesting, so I hope I'll find more of these little surprises. I'll probably have another big article ready tomorrow. After that, updates will be muuuuuch slower than these first two days.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Also added a blog entry for AA4, where we discover that once again Takumi likes to borrow ideas! :D

Anyway, with these last two posts this weekend, I'll switch gears and fall back to a more sensible update schedule now. For those who are curious as to what kind of information (trivia) you might find on the blog, here are some examples:- Takumi steals ideas!! :D- Suekane didn't only work on character designs, she basically created the Edgeworth and Mia we know now!- The True Origin of how Takumi created the first game!- The trilogy was never planned as a trilogy!- The Shocking Truth Why Takumi Didn't Work on Ace Attorney Investigations! (Not shocking)- Why Ema wasn't the protagonist in AAI!- How Takumi came up with the idea for Dai Gyakuten Saiban!- How Takumi came up with the characters of Dai Gyakuten Saiban!- How they decided to make Professor Layton VS Ace Attorney!- Why the judge is always called サイバンチョ in the game instead of サイバンチョウ!

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Some interesting Ace Attorney trivia from the articles I posted this week:- Naruhodo (Phoenix)'s original name!- A lot of proposed titles for the game (besides the well-known Surviban)- The truth behind the class trial!- How they made the testimony sync with the music in the first episode of AA6!- A early version of Reifa!- The favorite AA6 characters of the development staff!- What kind of women art director Fuse likes!- Programmer Noda's fetish!

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Last Gyakuten Saiban Library updates of this week:- The one blog entry where Takumi wrote about his mother.- The one blog entry where Yamazaki tells us all about some scrapped ideas for Ace Attorney 4 (including the IMPACTful first rough design of Trucy). (And I think she was later reused by Yamazaki in another game....)- An interview discussion where Takumi talks about mystery fiction and the books that have inspired him and the Ace Attorney series.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

I wish Takumi had more conversations from the characters' perspective. It's really amusing to read his dialogues. Btw, was the "objekshon" bit a call-back to one gag comic he drew of Nick and Prince Edgey, and the 異義あり?

Actually, the column was written years before that comic; that comic was made for Turnabout Crossover (which came with AA1DS). So it'd have be the other around, though mistaken 異義あり for 異議あり is common a mistake (like he said in the column, even the filename was wrong), I think it doesn't need to be any specific reference.

As for more non-game dialogues/character interactions, I think all, or at least most of Takumi's columns for Dreamaga contained similar short scenes where the characters would interact.

Short question: Would people want to see an semi-long interview about AA1DS (about the US release, and making of Rise from the Ashes) first, or a really long one about GK2 (about pretty much everything)?

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Update today: You remember the time when the first Gyakuten Saiban was so friggin' horrible nobody had anything good to say about it? And the time the game was actually canceled for a moment?

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Also important trivia: Sal Manella was the substitute character they used for GANT for most of the development cycle (before the sprites had been made). SAL. With the lines of GANT. Just imagine that.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Well, if you're offering... do you know which interview it was when Takumi first introduced Pess? I recall it's an oldie but goodie, but it's been difficult to locate particular interviews.

I happened to have that one page somewhere, so here! It also talks about Edgeworth's habit of singing karaoke and his favorite music genre. I don't think I will do many of the character-focused things on GS Library though, as I'm trying to focuson the actual development of the games.

Though you can really find a lot about these kinds of things in the fanbooks and guidebooks, I think, like random comments about the elder von Karma sister (even though Iwamoto is of the opinion it's a brother and has already drawn him).

Quote:

Also, if you can, I'd like more interviews with Tatsuro Iwamoto. Wasn't there one where he mentioned his Okami influence?

I'll see what I can find, I have one already for the 3DS Trilogy, and I still have to see what he wrote for the AA3 blog. By the way, I am not sure what interview you are thinking of, but Iwamoto actually worked on Okami (he worked on character animation). Perhaps you're thinking of that?

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Yes, Takumi also thinks GS1 is the best arc in the series. I'm kinda glad to see him admit that tbh cuz as much as I like 2 and 3 and then less with the later games I think GS1 is a much better plot than the rest. He even admits what everyone says that he was inexperienced and it shows whereas he better knew what he was doing eith the later games.

But it's funny I remember having arguments with people years ago about whether the series have gotten more japanese and someone always broke in to say it was nonsensical because it's a japanese game with anime graphics, but I insisted and here it is; AA1 was designed to be accessible to western players whereas 2 and 3 embraced the japanese-only audience after AA1 did not ship overseas. Explains what I mean when I say I think PWAA is more down to earth than the latter entires.

If you read all the material about the first game, you'll also notice that that game actually had A LOT of input and feedback from people other than Takumi. Most of the basic character relations were advocated by Suekane (main character designer) and (presumably) Mikami (Production Studio 4 boss) for example, while Inaba also did a lot to get the game in the current form (with SURVIBAN being quite different in tone (and even gameplay) compared to the current game).

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

I posted an extreeeeeemely long interview about Gyakuten Kenji 2 today. I'm fairly sure it has never been translated (and perhaps not even referenced) before and it is about basically everything, from feedback to the first AAI, to how the second game was made and collaboration projects with GK2. I think it's also worth reading if you're just into the current Ace Attorney games, because it also explains a lot about the marketing campagins of the AA games Eshiro produces (so also AA5/6).

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Why, actually? Considering it's a mystery game, and Yamazaki is a mystery-fiction fan...

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

I wish Takumi had more conversations from the characters' perspective. It's really amusing to read his dialogues.

I got my hands on the Dreamaga columns by Takumi yesterday, and yeah, they are exactly what you're looking for. Random slice-of-life dialogue segments, like one where Nick, Maya and Edgeworth are having a meal in the courtroom cafeteria, or one where Nick, Maya and Larry talk about Valentine's Day and even one about Mia and Diego the day before Mia's first trial. So these segments are pretty much the way to see more of the everyday life of the characters.

And no... I'm not going to do them for GS Library, as they don't really fit the goal of the blog.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Can you scan them? If not, it's fine. Uploaded photos are fine too as long as the quality is clear enough to be read.

Sorry, it's a bit inconvenient for me to do so (it's also almost fifty pages). You could purchase 『逆転裁判ファンブック なるほど逆転裁判』, which has reprints of the first run of the columns, which is what I did. (The book is OOP though, so you need to find a used copy).

Rubia Ryu the Royal wrote:

Well, if you're offering... do you know which interview it was when Takumi first introduced Pess? I recall it's an oldie but goodie, but it's been difficult to locate particular interviews.

Also, if you can, I'd like more interviews with Tatsuro Iwamoto. Wasn't there one where he mentioned his Okami influence?

As for these requests, these I have been able to answer on the blog (see below) :) To give the overview of what was posted this week:

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Next week, I'll be looking at.... the people behind the games you usually don't hear about. Programmers, people working on sound effects and backgrounds. So none of the usual suspects.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

And then I have some things about the first game. First a pre-release interview with producer Inaba (producer of the first three games). And there is a three part series of blogs by Takumi about the whole team (of seven + 2 producers) that created the first game. He explains the roles of each of them and how they helped to shape the game (part 1, part 2 and part 3).

If people have specific things they want to see: ask, and I'll see what I can do/find. And if you can provide sources to translate (about the development): always welcome.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

No requests for topics people want to read about? (So I can look for them). I'm almost ready with most of what I want to do. While I still have a very large portion of the blog posts for the first three games waiting for me, I'm actually mostly done with the games after that. While not everything I've prepared has been posted yet, I have major interviews on each of the games after AA4 ready (or already posted), and I have done most of the interesting blog posts for those games too (I am considering one or two more from GK2 and AA5, but most of them contain information repeated in interviews/other blog posts).

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

If you read all the material about the first game, you'll also notice that that game actually had A LOT of input and feedback from people other than Takumi. Most of the basic character relations were advocated by Suekane (main character designer) and (presumably) Mikami (Production Studio 4 boss) for example, while Inaba also did a lot to get the game in the current form (with SURVIBAN being quite different in tone (and even gameplay) compared to the current game).

Suekane contributing a lot to the identity does no surprise me considering she left to write manga. I also thought it was very noticeable in T&T already how many new characters looked different in style from her designs or how Grossberg's co-council drawings looked strange for instance.

I wonder how much input Kazuya Nuri has in defining the personalities and character relations of the designs he makes. I know he is a stickler for detail and cares a lot about the minutiae of his own art but I don't know how much he personally put into the writing of Ema Skye for instance.

Suekane contributing a lot to the identity does no surprise me considering she left to write manga. I also thought it was very noticeable in T&T already how many new characters looked different in style from her designs or how Grossberg's co-council drawings looked strange for instance.

Exactly one-third of all the characters of the first game were already designed by Iwamoto though, so it's not like his style wasn't part of the original charm and style of the game. Grossberg was actually one of Iwamoto's designs.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

- A long interview on AA5!. How the project was started, deciding on using Phoenix again, deciding on new mechanics and characters like Athena (and her name), the 2D-like 3D graphics and more!- There are some famous typos in the localized version, but Takumi is quite at them too. In this blog entry for AA2, he talks about those unsung heroes who have to hunt for Takumi's many typos: the bug checkers[url].- The Capcom Legend interview with Nuri for DGS. Nuri talks about his career at Capcom, about working on the series, on the characters he created and DGS in detail.

I'm basically through my stash of interesting long interviews on the game, so from now on it'll mostly be blog post, unless someone can point me to something interesting to translate (and recommendations are welcome!).

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Slow week this time. Like I said last time, I all basically have left now are the dev blogs, so unless someone can point me to something interesting (that's not already addressed on the blog), I'll just work my way through the blogs.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Oh, forgot to post the update here, but GS Library now also has the two blog posts on writing Turnabout Goodbyes (and that means I have all the episode-related posts for the first game now).

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

I'm not doing updates as regularly as first, but lately, I've updated Gyakuten Library with Takumi's columns on Turnabout Memories, The Stolen Turnabout and Turnabout Beginnings, as well as a long interview with both the producer of the Ace Attorney series (Eshiro) and the producer of the Danganronpa series of Spike-Chunsoft.

"One dumbbell, Watson! Consider an athlete with one dumbbell! Picture to yourself the unilateral development, the imminent danger of a spinal curvature. Shocking, Watson, shocking!" - The Valley of Fear

Hi. Thanks for the reads! I greatly enjoyed the articles! Good job, keep it up!One thought on the AA6 article. I don't think this is a spoiler. I never thought about Turnabout Time Traveler as the first case where all three of the "Samurai Bros" were in court together. Still doesn't boost it in my appraisal though (I consider it pretty much right down there with Turnabout Corner and The Monstrous Turnabout).

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